I know that most girls start their entries with 'Dear Diary' but that seems like an immature greeting for an 17 year old so I'll have to think of something else to begin my entries with. I'm not sure what yet. For now I'll just start with today's date.

Today is June 20th 2007. My 17th birthday and my dad just gave me this journal. A book to write in, what a present! Most seventeen year olds get car but not me, I get a book. Typical, in a family with 8 kids, 2 dogs and a cat.

Well, I guess instead of wasting time and paper I'll start this book off with some stuff about me.

My name is Sara Elizabeth and I was born in Miami, Fl. I have 4 brothers and 2 sisters. There's Ronnie who is 20, then me, then Niki who's 16, Ricky who's 15, Michael is 13, Jazmine is 12, and Justin is 10.

My father Dave is 20 years retired Navy, but is now in the reserves. He still enjoys traveling so we move every few years, I'm just hoping that he won't decide to pick up and move again anytime soon.

Aside from the fact that we never have very much money and having to share a room with my two sisters I love our family. I had to move to a new high school after my mom, brothers and I moved in with Dave. I have a lot of friends being in theater, dance and choir. I also started working backstage this year which I'm really starting to like but that doesn't surprise me because I've always liked anything having to do with the theater.

Geez, I've been writing so long I didn't even realize that its almost midnight. I have work tomorrow so I better get to sleep.

I guess this journal thing isn't so bad after all. I still would have liked a car though.

07/25/2007

So, remember how last time I wrote I said that my dad liked to move around, well he's decided to move again. Although, I'm not really all that upset about it. It's gonna be pretty cool. We're moving to Paris and my dad bought an old opera house.

He decided that with such a huge family, he should start a family business and that business is going to be to own and run an opera house. It's going to be awesome, we're gonna restore it. There are apartments built into the opera house where we're going to live and there's even dormitories for the actors, dancers, and singers that we hire. Dad even put each of us in charge of different departments. We're all gonna be a part of the renovations but once the opera house is restored then Mom and Dad will be in charge of business and financial departments. Niki will be in charge of Marketing. Ronnie, Joey, and Ricky will be in charge of maintenance, Jazmine is gonna be in charge of housekeeping and I'm gonna be in charge of the theater itself; hiring performers, stage hands, musicians, choosing what shows to put on, the building of sets and props; everything will be up to me and I can't wait!

It's a good thing I've been taking French for the past 3 years.

I've already started getting all the necessary paperwork ready so that as soon as we get to Paris I can apply at The American University of Paris; majoring in Fine Arts and a minor in Business. That way when mom and dad retire someday I can take over the running of the opera house.

08/05/2007

Okay, being on a plane for this long SUCKS. We had to take a 5 hour flight from Las Vegas to New York and then another 7 1/2 hour flight from New York to Paris and we didn't even have a lay over in New York.

08/07/2007

I've realized that having this diary to write in is actually a good thing because I am able to get all my frustrations out and vent all I want by writing in here, instead of killing someone like I wanted to do on the plane.

So, we've been in Paris for a day and here are somethings that I've noticed so far.

I barely remember anything of my high school French. I don't understand how I could have been so good at it just a year ago and now all I remember is about half the alphabet, how to count to 30, and a few odd sentences like My name is Sara and How are you. Luckily, everyone we've met so far speaks English.

Paris is absolutely beautiful. I always knew it would be.

Even though it's sort of falling apart the opera house is gorgeous. It's huge and I'm sure that it has tons of hidden passage ways. I plan on finding them all.

I wish that I could draw so that I could draw pictures of the Opera House in here but drawing definitely not in my skill set. So detailed descriptions will have to do. When I envisioned the opera house before I imagined something looking like Notre Dame, gargoyles and kinda old and creepy looking but it doesn't look like that at all.

The outside of the opera house is all pillars, and archs, and windows. I counted at least 20 windows at the front of the building alone. On the top of the opera house there's this beautiful green dome and golden angel and horse sculptures. Right now a lot of the windows are broken and the sculptures obviously aren't real gold because the paint is chipping and parts of the dome are broken but I know once all that is fixed and the building is repainted, it is going to catch the eye of anyone going by.

The lobby is even more spectacular. You walk in through the main entrance and the first thing you see is this beautiful marble staircase. Now most of the marble is chipped or scratched and has about a foot of dust covering it but you can tell that once its polished it'll be gorgeous. You can tell that the railings of the staircase were once gold, and there are these red tapestry looking things hanging from the walls, all covered in dust and grime now. There are balconies over looking the lobby and a huge, mostly broken, chandelier hanging in the center of the room and beautiful candelabras on the walls. It's hard to see it now but if you have a good imagination like I do, you can see how beautiful and breath taking this building must have been when it first opened.

Then there's the theater it self. Old, broken red and gold seats litter the floor and there is a chandelier on the floor in the middle of the room. There must have been a fire here at some point because there is black ash and soot everywhere; the seats, the walls, the huge curtain on the floor of the stage. There is also a huge whole in the roof where the chandelier must have hung. The rails of the many balconies are all crumbling as well as up on the seats of the second floor. Its all wood flooring in here, now broken and scuffed, black from the fire.

The back stage areas look the worst. There are still remains of costumes and old props, sets, flats, and there is broken glass everywhere. The stairs up to the cat walk are all broken and I haven't found any other way up there yet. It's crazy to imagine how they performed shows here all those years ago; from what I can see of the lights over the stage and hanging from the cat walk, they weren't more than gas lamps. The ropes and weights from the rails for the lights and sets are all broken in the wings. The doors of the dressing rooms are all broken and the rooms themselves are trashed inside.

There are also offices upstairs. They must have been for the previous owners and other workers. They take up almost all of the second floor other than the balconies and seating for the upstairs. My parents have decided to turn these offices into a giant apartment for the family.

As I was wondering around I found the dormitories. I guess the actors or dancers, and stage hands lived here.

I think I'm the only one who sees how beautiful this place must have been. Everyone is walking around like they're in a haunted house or like they're waiting for the whole building to come crumbling down around them. My parents look like they bit off more than they can chew.

I think its great and I cant wait to get started on the renovations.

Well we're leaving the hotel and heading out to dinner so that's all for now.

My family is unbelievable.Dad and the guys are all ready to give up and go back to the states. We've only been here for two days, for Gods sake! And haven't even started renovations! They're trying to quit before they've even started and Mom and the girls are even more ridiculous.

They want to take this "opportunity" to completely redesign the inside of the opera house, they want it to look "Modern".

They want to have the lobby completely redone so that everything in it is white and blue. They want to put a giant fountain in the middle of the room and have little white and blue couches everywhere with popcorn and soda vendors everywhere. They want to have lights strung across the ceiling like Christmas lights and have pictures of famous female actresses like Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe put up.

In the theater itself they want to have benches not seats. Benches! And a baby blue curtain hanging in front of the stage. And clowns running around the aisles before the show. They want to get rid of the orchestra pit and not have a real orchestra playing for the shows they want it all to be recorded. They don't want to use the balconies, apparently it's a hazard.

They're idiots and I told them so! Why would you spend so much money to fly the entire family here, buy an opera house then decide to give up and sell it before you've done anything more then walk through the building.

Secondly, this is an opera house not a circus! Popcorn vendors, clowns, Christmas lights! I told them all that if that's what they plan on doing then count me out, I'll move in to a dorm at the university and get my degree, then open a real opera house.

So, Dad just called me and told me that they all had a family meeting without me and talked about it and came to the conclusion that none of them have any idea what the hell they are doing and that they have already invested too much in the opera house to just leave. So, they put me in charge of everyone and everything.

Apparently, they have come to they're senses.

Now I have to figure out how I'm gonna do this.

The first thing I think we need to do is get this place cleared out. Get rid of everything left backstage or in the dressing rooms and offices, see if there is anything that we can keep and reuse.

Then we need to get a cleaning crew in here and get rid of all this dust, and grime, ash and soot.

Then we need to get electric wiring and plumbing put into the building, apparently the building was shut down before any of that came around.

Then we need to hire contractors and workers I guess.

I think we should focus on one area of the building at a time. First we focus on the outside; get the windows all repaired, the roof fixed, the statues and actual building repainted. Then focus on the lobby and get the chandeliers and candelabras fitted with electrical wiring and get them back up and working.

Then we move on to the theater. I decided I'm sticking with the red and gold theme through out the opera house, it just seems to fit.

But, probably the biggest job of all will be getting the back stage areas redone. There needs to be new furniture in the dressing rooms,we need have the floor of the stage redone, we need to get new lights, have a whole new sound system put in, new lighting system, new ropes and weights for the rails put in,and the cat walk needs to be rebuilt. Also, the offices need to be converted in to an apartment.

I think finally with this start of a plan set we can move forward on the right track.

08/20/2007 10:00pm

So, I stayed behind at the opera house tonight without the others. I wanted to walk around by myself with a notebook and really get a feel for the place. I haven't had a chance to do this on my own. I wanted to walk around with my own thoughts and write down an ideas I had. I knew that had to be some kind of basement or underground level.

I also really wanted to go down into the basements. I knew that there had to be hidden passageways.There was no way that a building this massive wouldn't have them.

When I decided to stay at the opera house, I figured that I would explore and get to know the place a little better and then I would head back to the hotel.

I was wrong.

As I walked back into the lobby after seeing my family out I was thinking about how I had decided that I'm not going to live in the apartment with the others. During my walk through I came to a door backstage that I hadn't bothered to open before. It was locked when I tried to open it but the door was so old and crumbling that I was able to kick it in. It was a dressing room like the others except it hadn't been destroyed. It was almost like this room had been preserved. It was dusty sure but nothing was broken. All of the old furniture is still there and intact and there are the withered up remains of flowers everywhere.

But the amazing thing about the room is the beautiful, floor to roof, gold framed, full length mirror. It's absolutely breath taking but I had the strangest feeling that someone was watching me from behind the mirror. I could just feel it, someone else's presence.

Even so I knew that I wanted this to be my room. There's an attached bathroom and I can probably have all of the old beautiful furniture cleaned and repaired so that I can keep it. I'll have a door built into the wall to lead into the dressing room next door and I'll turn that into my office.

Also, I've come to the conclusion that the opera house is haunted, not just because of the presence I felt behind the mirror but also because I've been seeing and hearing things. I keep seeing a figure all in black out of the corner of my eye, but when I look its gone and I feel like I'm being watched and followed. Also, I keep hearing singing. It's the most beautiful male voice I have ever heard. At first I heard it when I was walking thought the hall leading to the the different boxes on the second floor, it was coming from down in the theater but when I got into the box and looked there wasn't anyone there but I know I heard singing.

I knew that this would be an adventure but the opera house being haunted is awesome. I don't think it could get any better.